"It sounds like the prettiest romance imaginable!" exclaimed Marion, eagerly. "In that old house, and among so many ancient portraits, what could be more picturesque?"
"A poor relation of Lord Doncaster was at this time the talk of all Yorkshire for her beauty," added Mr. Crawford. "Young De Crespigny, then almost a boy, had come home, I remember hearing, and admired her only too much; but whether she married, or what became of her, perhaps you will tell me, Miss Howard, as I never heard?"
"Then you are not informed of all that has occurred in the world during your natural life, though you seem very nearly so!" replied Caroline. "Whenever I hear a story told, I like to put a hat on its head, a stick in its hand, and to send it travelling rapidly round the world; but the mystery relating to Mary Anstruther was, like that of poor Miss Mordaunt, and of others in the same house, carefully hushed up, and my uncle's family soon after moved to Scotland. Louis De Crespigny was, even then, I am told, formed to gain and to keep the heart of any girl, with a perfect consciousness of his own powers, and very little scruple in using them!"
"He still has a very deep sense of his own supernatural merits," observed Marion, "and finds many admirers to agree with him, though I think his uncle must have been still handsomer once. The features of both are very peculiar!"
"I often think," said Caroline, coloring and hesitating, "that Sir Arthur's young friend, Henry De Lancey, looks as if the whole family of Doncaster had been distilled into one. He has the hair dark as midnight, for which my uncle was so celebrated; that remarkable drooping eyelid, too, as if his eye-lashes were too heavy to be lifted with ease, and the magnificent outline of his profile."
"You are right," exclaimed Sir Arthur, in a deep, low, musing tone. "The madman, Howard or Anstruther, who acted so long as my clerk, and still persecutes you, once hinted something of the kind, in an unguarded moment. I have been ever since on the watch to strengthen the clue, but in vain. If I could but live to see that mystery solved!"
"You shall!" said Caroline playfully. "What should hinder you? I must make it my business now, to ferret out more respecting the story of that Miss Mordaunt, which has faded into oblivion, like the thousand other wonders of the past.
Of course, she lived until she died; but where,
Or when, I never heard; nor you nor I need care."
"But I do care," said Sir Arthur, earnestly. "It seems to me, as if there were here some scattered links of the chain by which we might discover Henry's origin. Truth has been too long already at the bottom of a well; but we must invent some diving-bell to bring her up! It would give me satisfaction, whatever his connexions are, to identify them!"